novimus, aut ullo strepitu fora vestra movemus? Fugerunt trepidi vera ac manifesta canentem non sumet damnata togam. "sed Iulius ardet, 55 60 65 70 men, and is pale with a doubly unnatural taste. Pray, do we plead causes, are we acquainted with the laws of the state, or do we disturb your courts with any clamour of ours? There are few women who wrestle, few who eat the food of athletes: while you card wool, and bear back in baskets the completed fleeces: you twist the distaff pregnant with slender thread better than Penelope, more nimbly than Arachne, work such as a dirty slave-concubine has to do, sitting on the log she is tied to. It is notorious why Hister filled up his will in favour of his freedman alone, why, during his life, he gave so many presents to his virgin-wife. She will be rich who sleeps third in a large bed. Do you get married and hold your tongue: secrets confer cut jewels. Yet, after this, a harsh verdict is passed upon us women. Judgment pardons the ravens and harasses the doves." The Stoicidae fled in confusion from her as she gave utterance to these true and palpable things. For what had Lauronia said that was false? But what will not others do, when you, Creticus, put on gauze dresses, and, with the people astonished at such attire, hold forth against the Proculas and the Pollitae? Fabulla is an adulteress ; let Carfinia be condemned, if you please, into the bargain: yet, though condemned, she will not put on such a toga as that. "But aestuo." nudus agas, minus est insania turpis. 75 80 85 July rages; I am on fire." Plead stark naked, then; insanity would be less disgraceful. A pretty dress for the people, but recently victorious, with their wounds yet green, and that old mountain populace, after laying down their ploughs, to hear you proposing laws and statutes in! What would you not exclaim if you saw such clothes on the person of a Judex! I ask whether gauze dresses would become even a witness? And yet you, stern unbending man, master of your freedom, you, Creticus, are showing your nakedness. Contagion has given us this plague-spot, and will pass it on to many more, just as a whole herd in the fields perishes through the mange and scurf of a single pig, and one grape acquires a taint from the mere sight of another grape. You will, one day or other, venture on something yet more disgraceful than this dress. No one reaches the height of infamy at a step: by degrees, people will take you into their company, who, in their houses, wear long fillets on their brows, and put chains all over their necks, and propitiate Bona Dea with the belly of a young sow and a huge bowl; but, by a perverted usage, woman, driven far away, does not cross the threshold. To males alone is the altar of the goddess open. "Hence, ye profane fair!" is the cry. "Here no female piper sounds her plaintive horn instrument." Such clamatur, "nullo gemit hic tibicina cornu." 90 95 ille tenet speculum, pathici gestamen Othonis, Actoris Aurunci spolium, quo se ille videbat armatum, cum iam tolli vexilla iuberet. 100 res memoranda novis annalibus atque recenti historia, speculum civilis sarcina belli. nimirum summi ducis est occidere Galbam 105 orgies as these the Baptae celebrated with secret torch, who were wont to weary out even the Athenian Cotytto. One, with slanted needle, lengthens his eyebrows, touched with damp soot, and raising the lids, paints his quivering eyes: another drinks out of a Priapusshaped glass, and fills a net of gold thread with his bushy hair, dressed in blue checks, or pale green stuffs, shorn of their pile, while the servant too swears by the Juno of his master. Another holds a mirror, the object wielded by pathic Otho, "the spoil of Auruncan Actor," in which he used to behold himself accoutred at the moment of ordering the standards to be taken up. A thing to be commemorated in our new annals and recent history, a mirror, the baggage of a civil war! Doubtless it showed a consummate general to slaughter Galba, and to pamper his own skin: the energy of a great citizen to aim at the spoils of the Palace on the field of Bebriacum, and to spread with his fingers the bread-poultice pressed upon his face: an act which neither the quivered Semiramis perpetrated in the Assyrian world, nor sorrowing Cleopatra in her Actian ship. Here is no shame in their language, nor respect for the decorum of the table. Here is the foul license of Cybele, and of hic nullus verbis pudor aut reverentia mensae, hic turpis Cybeles et fracta voce loquendi libertas, et crine senex fanaticus albo sacrorum antistes, rarum ac memorabile magni gutturis exemplum conducendusque magister. 110 120 quid tamen exspectant, Phrygio quos tempus erat iam 115 more supervacuam cultris abrumpere carnem ? quadringenta dedit Gracchus sestertia dotem cornicini, sive hic recto cantaverat aere: signatae tabulae, dictum "feliciter!" ingens coena sedet, gremio iacuit nova nupta mariti. o proceres, censore opus est an haruspice nobis ? scilicet horreres maioraque monstra putares, si mulier vitulum vel si bos ederet agnum? segmenta et longos habitus et flammea sumit, arcano qui sacra ferens nutantia loro sudavit clipeis ancilibus. o pater urbis,. unde nefas tantum Latiis pastoribus? unde haec tetigit, Gradive, tuos urtica nepotes? traditur ecce viro clarus genere atque opibus vir: 125 speaking in effeminate tones, and the phrensied old man, with white hair, the chief priest of the rites, a rare and notable example of monstrous gluttony, who might be engaged to teach the science. Yet what are they waiting for, since the time has long since come for them to cut off with knives, after the Phrygian fashion, their superfluous parts? Gracchus has brought a dowry of four hundred sestertia to a cornet-player—or it may have been on a straight horn that he had performed: the contract has been signed; felicitations offered; a dinner on a large scale is set out; the new-made bride has reclined on the bosom of his husband. O nobles! is it a censor we need, or an aruspex? Would you, forsooth, be more horrified, would you deem it a greater prodigy, if a woman gave birth to a calf or an ox to a lamb? That man puts on flounces and long dresses and bridal-veils who has borne the sacred emblems swinging from the mystic thong, who has sweated beneath the shields of Mars! O father of the city! whence has come such monstrous impiety to the shepherds of Latium? Whence, O Gradivus ! has this stinging itch seized your descendants? See now, a man illustrious in family and fortune is handed over in marriage to another man; nec galeam quassas, nec terram cuspide pulsas, 130 135 140 145 omnibus ad podium spectantibus, his licet ipsum et Catulis Paulique minoribus et Fabiis et admoveas, cuius tunc munere retia misit. "I have a visit of ceremony in the valley of Quirinus." Why ask? A male friend and you do not shake your helmet, nor strike the earth with your spear, nor complain to your father. Be off, then, and retire from the soil of that stern field which you neglect. to go through at sunrise to-morrow, "What is the occasion of the visit?" 66 is to be taken to wife. He invites but a small party." Let us only live a little longer; these sort of things will be done, yes, will be done openly, and will be for getting themselves recorded in the gazette. Meanwhile, there is one great cause of torment which sticks to these male brides-that they are unable to bear, and by means of offspring to retain the affections of their husbands. But it is better that nature vouchsafes to their wills no power over their bodies. They die barren, and to them bloated Lyde is of no help with her medicated box, nor does it help them to hold out their hands to the nimble Lupercus. Yet even this monstrosity was surpassed by the trident of Gracchus, clad in a tunic, when a gladiator traversed in flight the middle of the arena, who was more nobly born than the Capitolini, and the Marcelli, and the Catuli, and the descendants of Paulus, and the Fabii, and all the spectators in the front seats, even though you add to these the man himself at whose show he then threw the nets. B |